Former Rivoli operator still lives within site of the onetime X-rated theater he ran

6:04 PM,
Feb. 16, 2014

Charles Chulchian

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Valentine's Day is a sad reminder for a lot of people but especially for Charles R. Chulchian.

It was on Valentine's Day 1992 that Chulchian was forced by the city of Indianapolis to shut down his business. He ran pornographic movies at the Rivoli Theater on East 10th Street. He had rock concerts there, too, occasionally, but his chief revenue source was dirty movies. He'd screened them since 1975, since the advent of the genre's so-called "golden age," when the films began to have actual story lines and their stars, like Linda Lovelace and John C. Holmes, came close to being actual celebrities.